


I'll Be Anybody

by autumndynasty



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: F/M, I haven't!, Light Angst, Pre-Despair, Spoilers, You don't need to have read zero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumndynasty/pseuds/autumndynasty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hajime's starting be a stranger in his own head. Then one day, a stranger with pink hair and a smile full of teeth introduces herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Anybody

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vantas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vantas/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, vantas! I hope you enjoy your gift (and anyone else who fancies seeing Junko mess with Hajime/Izuru)!

Hajime sits at his computer desk, hands hovering over the keyboard, motionless and silent. On the laptop screen, the cursor blinks a relentless rhythm, waiting for his words. He's trying to write an email to his parents; his long-suffering, wonderful parents who paid for him to attend Hope's Peak and no doubt want to hear from him.

It's been over two months since he last wrote to them. Time just... got away from him.

Hajime looks over at the framed photo of a mother and father smiling blandly out at him, arms around eachother. They look tense, posed. Empty. Their fixed grins make Hajime sigh and he reaches out, one hand pausing as he lightly grips the photo frame, then pulls it gently down to rest face-down on the desk.

He doesn't know what to say to them anymore. He closes the laptop and pushes away with tense hands.

\--

_(I mean, is he really theirs anymore?)_

\--

Her name is Junko Enoshima. Her dyed pink hair is so distinctive, it doesn't take Hajime long to figure out who the girl is that peers through the lab windows. She often peeks in on Fridays, waving cheekily at the lead researcher and giving Hajime hard, long stares when she thinks he's not looking.

He sees her on the sports field between classes. One of the Ultimate students, as if that wasn't immediately obvious from her distinctive look; that's something frowned on in the reserve course he attends.

\--

On one memorable day in April, he was sitting on the reserve bench of the baseball pitch, waiting for his turn and idly glancing around. The girls of the Ultimate classes were playing lacrosse on the next field over and Hajime glued his eyes on the pink flurries of Junko's hair as she spun around the field; she wasn't really playing, it seemed. She looked like she was just darting in her sister's way, Junko's twin looking increasingly mutinous and frustrated at each botched pass.

Hajime was staring blankly at the action and it took him a moment to realise when it stopped. He started, realising that both Junko and her twin, (whose name, he would later learn, was Mukuro) were looking over at him. Junko raised an arm above her head, waving cheerily at him, Mukuro a silent statue next to her. Her stare was definitely intimidating even from a distance but, Hajime mused later, the thing that had disturbed him most about the girls was Junko's smile. Even as far away as it had been, it was like that of a shark who had spotted blood in the water.

\--

There would have been a time when he would have known she was the Ultimate Fashionista and her sister the Ultimate Soldier. He'd have known their names. They were facts he would have hoarded like a dragon's gold, studied and cooed over.

It was funny really. Why had he obsessed over stats like that? What did he expect? That they'd realise how big a fan he was and talk to him? Accept him? Acknowledge some heretofore unknown talent inside him and befriend him with open arms?

_(It barely mattered now, did it?)_

\--

"Hey there,"

The Ultimate Fashionista pokes her head around the door, blue eyes darting around to check for supervisors, or maybe her friend, Yasuke, the head neurologist in charge of the project. He'd seen Junko talking to him in the hallways sometimes, her expression bored yet hiding something predatorial. Or maybe something just hollow, echoing empty behind her eyes.

"Have you seen Yasuke?" Junko asks. "Yes, you. Well have you?" she scowls when Hajime looks around to see if she was addressing someone else; anyone but plain, boring Hajime. If he found even himself boring, why would an Ultimate bother engaging him?

"He was going to the printing lab," Hajime shrugs. Everyone else is on lunch, but Yasuke had asked him to stay behind for a while as he got the results of the latest surgery.

"Well, nevermind," Junko mirrors his shrug, slipping into the room with an easy grace. "I wanted to talk to you anyway. You keep looking but you never say hello. How rude can you get?" she pouts, hands on her hips like she's posing for a photo shoot. Maybe every moment is a fashion shoot for a model.

Hajime shrugs again.

"You're Junko Enoshima, right?"

"Well try to sound a bit more excited about meeting me at last," Junko flips one of her pink ponytails, flouncing over without a care to perch on the end of his hospital bed. "So you're Izuru, huh? What do you do then?"

"It's Hajime," he mumbles out of habit, then shakes his head. No, he's been told to drop that enough times by now. "Wait, sorry. Do?" he asks.

"What're your hobbies? What's your talent?" Junko drawls, rolling her eyes.

"I can do pretty much anything," Hajime says.

He stares at Junko's blue eyes. They aren't natural; he can see the ring of contact lenses around her pupils. He wonders what colour her eyes actually are.

"Oh really?" Junko exclaims. It's theatrical, over the top; she must already know about the project from Yasuke. Of course he would brag about it to her, Hajime thinks. Yasuke, like everyone else these days, is so mind-numbingly predictable.

She doesn't comment on his evasion on the topic of hobbies. That's good; he doesn't want to think about it.

_(He can't figure it out.)_

"So does that mean you could be a fashion model too?" she reaches out and flicks at his unruly waves of dark hair.

Hajime hadn't expected to hear that and finds he doesn't like surprise.

_(He never had, come to that.)_

"If I had to," he says, eyes narrowing. The flash of anger comes and goes, quick as a breath. But it's the strongest feeling he's been able to muster all week and he almost regrets it's loss.

"Sure, sure," Junko replies, an easy smile on her lips. "But that's not what I wanted to ask you, really. What I wanted to know is this: doesn't being able to do everything get boring after a while?"

"...What?" Hajime blinks. Faint surprise again. Twice in one day.

He thinks back to his parents. The Hinatas. They approved of talented people, always bemoaned his lack of distinguishing features, that he'd never find a girl with his bland interests. He couldn't play an instrument before, he couldn't speak more than one language, an average B or C grade student at best. Unstylish, uncultured, no interesting friends to brag about to their relatives at family gatherings. They'd enrolled him on the reserve course in the hope that some of the talented people at Hope's Peak would rub off on him and, even if it didn't, at least they could say their son went to the world's most prestigious school.

_(What hypocrites, he spits to himself.)_

"It's expected of me," he says simply, indifferently.

Junko blinks wide-eyed at him then laughs, high and girlish.

"Oh, he was so right. You're an interesting person, Izuru." Junko leans forward, resting one perfectly manicured hand on his ankle over the bedsheets. "We should hang out sometime," she says. Her fake blue eyes are bright and sharp as razors. They glint with promise and more importantly, with malicious intent.

He can't look away.

"What colour are your eyes really?" Hajime asks.

"What? You mean you aren't able to work it out?" Junko smirks, leaning back. "Guess you've got a ways to go then."

She leaps off the bed and saunters back to the lab door. She opens it, pausing half out of the room to look over her shoulder back at him.

"When you can tell me, then we'll hang out. You know," she pauses and looks back out into the hall. Hajime stares at the back of her head. "I get bored easily too."

With a casual wave over her head, she disappears out of the door, quickly passed by Yasuke shuffling papers in his hand and muttering with a determined focus on the data contained, and nothing else.

It's only now that Hajime has Yasuke to study that he can see what had happened.

Yasuke had arranged the meeting. And he felt he could likely work out why, if he could be bothered to analyse the situation more.

Something stirs in his stomach, turned it with a lurch of some emotion whose name escapes him.

Growing bored of the feeling, he looked out of the window. A red-breasted robin in the tree outside was singing threats and warnings to the sky.

\--

_(She says, "Don't do what you want." She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want.")_

**Author's Note:**

> The ending bracketed lines and the title are from Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahnuik. If ever there was a book that summarized Junko's outlook on life, it's that one.
> 
> I had to wonder how quickly Hajime was converted to Izuru. And how did he start to get involved with Junko and her Despair? So that's what I wanted to focus on - the beginning of the fall. I haven't read Zero, so setting it in this era may have limited me a bit but I just wanted to go for it! I really hope you guys enjoyed the results? :)


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